SALEM - The Oregon Department of Veterans' Affairs and the Oregon Military Department will honor minority military veterans during a celebration ceremony to recall the 60th anniversary of the Desegregation of the United States armed forces. The ceremonial event will be held July 26, at 10 a.m., at the Anderson Readiness Center in Salem. 
 
On July 26, 1948 President Harry S. Truman signed into law Executive Order 9981 which ordered the integration of the armed forces - a major advance in civil rights.  The Order states, "It is hereby declared to be the policy of the President that there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion, or national origin."
 
Oregon Department of Veterans' Affairs Director Jim Willis sees this celebration as a way to recognize where we have been and where we are going as a nation.  "The military was the first institution in America to understand that we cannot tolerate a divided society," Willis said.  "While there is still work to be one, our country has come a long way since 1948 in part due to desegregating the military."
 
Original members of both the World War II U.S. Army's Japanese-American 442nd Infantry Regiment and the Army Air Corps' 332nd Fighter Group known as the Tuskegee Airmen are scheduled to be special guests at the celebration.  Other minority military veterans also will be present.  The keynote speaker will be U.S. Air Force Deputy Inspector General, Brig. Gen. Garry Dean who is the Oregon National Guard's first African-American general officer. 
 
Desegregation of the military had its roots in the historic formation in 1942 of minority military units, such as the 442nd Infantry Regiment and the Tuskegee Airmen.  At the time, President Franklin D. Roosevelt noted, "No loyal citizen of the United States should be denied the democratic right to exercise the responsibilities of his citizenship, regardless of his ancestry.  Americanism is not, and never was, a matter of race or ancestry."
 
Oregon's Adjutant General, Maj. Gen. Raymond F. Rees, has lived that ideal for more than 40 years during his military service.  Nearly 40 years ago in Vietnam, Rees, lost five soldiers he commanded in battle.  "One was a black sharecropper's son, one was a redneck from Tennessee, one was a Puerto Rican from New York, one was a drafted upper-middle class medic from St. Louis, and one was a Mexican-American from the Rio Grande Valley," Rees said.  "Their honorable service and sacrifice is an indelible statement about and affirmation of the right of all Americans, regardless of race, to the privileges of citizenship in this great democracy."
 
The Oregon National Guard's Anderson Readiness Center is located at 3225 State St., N.E., near the corner of State Street and Hawthorne Avenue.
 

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